Content delivery network provider CloudFlare has asked to work with the Tor Project to implement solutions that will allow users of the anonymity-providing web browser to avoid blocks, CAPTCHAs and a growing list of other impediments which seem to be signalling a war between Tor users and regular network traffic.

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CloudFlare co-founder Matthew Prince writes that 94% of the requests that CloudFlare logs across the Tor network are ‘per se malicious’.
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The offer of compromise comes in the wake of a heated comments-section debate in the last five weeks in an already inflammatory post at the Tor Project entitled ‘Issues with corporate censorship and mass surveillance’.

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CloudFlare have proposed a considerable number of solutions to the CAPTCHA blockades, but all of them require the degrading either of the Tor service (such as full 160-bit SSL hashes, likely to slow the service to a crawl) or the anonymity it provides (such as a plug-in that makes special communication to CloudFlare in cases where a CAPTCHA might otherwise be encountered.

“In essence, the protocol allows a user to solve a single CAPTCHA and in return learn a specified number of tokens that are blindly signed that can be used for redemption instead of witnessing CAPTCHA challenges in the future,” the CloudFlare authors write. “By issuing a number of tokens per CAPTCHA solution that is suitable for ordinary browsing but too low for attacks, we maintain similar protective guarantees to those of CloudFlare's current system. We also leave the door open to an elevated threat response that does not offer to accept bypass tokens.”